Upstaged
by pinfeather
Summary: Ben Grimm decides to spend some time with his youngest daughter, Yancy. However, this turns out to be more complicated than it sounds. Same universe as Curtain Call. No longer being updated.
1. Chapter 1

**After a very astute comment from Vigatus, I have decided to . . . SWITCH CHAPTER AROUND. No one can stop me! Ha ha ha! And hopefully things will be easier to follow now.**

**This story takes place a few months after **_**Curtain Call**_**. It is not a sequel. Instead it will deal, mainly, with the Thing.**

**However, I promise to tell you exactly what happened to Doctor Doom at the end of Curtain Call…**

…**just not yet.**

_Time: approximately 2:13 am. Tape dates from approximately twenty-three years ago._

"Unca Ben?"

_Voice recognition software activated. Voice match: Franklin Benjamin Richards._

"Unca Ben?"

"Mmmghhrr. What?"

_Voice match: Benjamin Jacob Grimm._

"Unca Ben, I had a bad dream."

"'Kay."

"Unca _Ben_! Wake _up_!"

"Kid?"

"It's me, Franklin."

"What time is . . . _two _in the _morning_?"

"I had a bad dream."

"Look, Frankie, if you want your mom, you're in the wrong room. Just Uncle Ben and Aunt Alicia in here. You want me to get you somethin'? Glass of milk, maybe?"

"I had a bad dream."

"What . . . you want to tell me about it? Okay—here—I'll get up. What happened in the dream?"

"Um, um, there were puppets, and we hadda fight one of your kids."

"Which one? Alyce or Jacob?"

"No—a new one. One you lost."

"A _new_ one?"

"A little one."

"And then what happened?"

"I touldn't tell."

"Okay, is that it? You ready to go back to bed now, Frank?"

"Uh-huh."

"That's it? That was the dream?"

"Uh-huh."

"How'd I lose a kid?"

"I dunno. You fordot about them?"

"How in blue blazes do I _forget _about—"

"Mmph. Ben?"

_Voice match: Alicia Masters Grimm._

"Uh, go back to sleep, hon."

"Okay . . . are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just taking Franklin back to bed."

_Break transcript._

"Reed?"

"What's wrong?"

"Um . . . that test you ran? The one that said Franklin was gettin' superpowers?"

"Yes, what about it?"

"Uh . . . nothin'. Forget it."

_File:_

_Richards, Franklin: _

_Age twenty-seven. Telepathic. __**Precognitive**__._

_File:_

_Grimm, Alyce:_

_Age twenty-five. Plasma generation._

_File:_

_Grimm, Jacob:_

_Age twenty-five. Super-strength._

_File:_

_Grimm, Daniel:_

_Age nineteen. Plasma generation._

_File:_

_Grimm, Jeremiah:_

_Age nineteen. Super-strength._

_File:_

_Grimm, Yancy:_

_Age thirteen. Super-strength._

_Notes: __**youngest child of Ben Grimm**__._

_File:_

_Masters, Philip. A.k.a. "Puppet Master."_

_Age seventy-two. Limited mind control._

_Notes: powers derived from use of __**puppets**__._

_Time: 5:31 a.m., today._

"Ben?"

"Whuh? Oh—somethin' wrong, Alicia?"

"What are you doing?"

"Uh, just goin' through some of Reed's old files."

"I thought I heard voices."

"Um, just a tape."

"Which tape?"

"Uh, something of Franklin. Building surveillance tapes, that's all. Just . . . a dream he had when he was little, that's all."

"Was it important?"

"Dunno yet."

"I was going to ask you—could you run an errand for me today?"

"Sure. What errand?"

"I need to get my new statue to the gallery."

"Sure. I can take Yancy. Bonding time."

"Thanks, sweetie."

"Anytime."

**I hope everyone was able to follow that, because that was fairly important.**


	2. Chapter 2

Ben Grimm prided himself on keeping things simple. He had to. Reed never used a word that was less than three syllables long, Johnny—John now—was caught up in interplanetary diplomacy, and Sue was, well, a woman.

And so Ben Grimm's list of the most important things in the world now contained, and always would contain, only three things.

First: family. Right now, that was Yancy, his baby girl at age thirteen, and the most beautiful little orange rock monster ever to grace the halls of the Baxter Building.

Second: fighting. Okay, maybe not fighting right now. Make that the _absence _of fighting. He was supposed to be running an errand. Incidentally, the errand would give him some precious time with Yancy, in between the hectic events of a superhero's life. Which brought him right back to number one on the list.

Third and last on the list: food. Lots and lots and _lots _of food.

Right now, he was leaving the McDonald's with a colorful paper bag of food under each arm. For whatever reason, the drive-through window was too small for such large bags to fit through. _Who designs these buildings, anyway? _

Each bag contained a sea of French fries and three of the largest hamburgers he could order.

"Listen," he'd told the clerk. "This is a special order. I need you to stack as many burgers onto the bun as you can, until they start tipping off. Then you tape them down. Then you add some more burgers."

Why did waiters always look so nervous when he walked into a restaurant?

He had also bought two icy-cold Pepsis, and a Happy Meal toy for Yancy.

As he reached the van, he paused and listened. He'd left Yancy the car keys so that she could listen to the radio.

Black-eyed Peas was on, the volume cranked all the way up, and Yancy was leaning back to listen with a content smile on her orange face. Her hands were tapping on the dashboard, and doubtlessly her feet were tapping too.

She was beautiful.

The music, not so much.

He wondered—what was the fastest speed anyone had ever lunged for the off button?

Yancy, glancing in the rear view mirror, noticed him and sat up quickly. She reached over and turned the volume down from "brain hemorrhage" to "mild bleeding from the ears."

"Here's lunch," Ben said, walking around to the passenger's side and unloading the bags.

"Oh, good!" She started pawing through them. "You remembered to get normal hamburgers, not cheeseburgers, right? I don't like cheese."

"Yeah, I remembered." He lumbered around the trunk to reach the driver's door, and swung into his seat with a grunt.

He liked this car. It was the only one big enough for him to fit inside.

Glancing back, he saw Alicia's sculpture looming in the very back, covered in draperies and blankets.

_Mission one: Get the sculpture to the gallery._

_Mission two: Spend father-daughter time with Yancy._

"Dad?" Yancy said incredulously. He glanced up at her and saw that she was holding the Happy Meal—a little plastic bag containing a green plastic pony.

"Dad, you got me a _My Little Pony_?" Her face was disbelieving.

"Yeah." He started to feel worried. "You used to like those, right?"

"When I was, like, three." She set it on the dashboard and bit into her hamburger.

Ben took a deep breath and pulled out of the parking space, heading back into traffic. He immediately remembered why it was, exactly, that he liked to use the Fantasticar for errands. The cars on the street were barely moving.

But hey—this meant more time to bond.

"So . . ." He cleared his throat. "Seen any good movies lately?"

"No. They're still rebuilding the theater that's nearest to the Baxter Building, remember?"

Dang it. What had he talked about with Alyce, when she was this age?

Of _course _it had been his firstborn and his youngest who were girls. (And three boys—Jacob, Daniel, and Jeremy—in between.) Just as Yancy was beginning to grow up, Alyce had left home to start a career, and Ben had forgotten completely what it was like to have your daughter be thirteen.

What had Alyce been like, when she was thirteen? Oh . . . that had been when she wanted to go goth, hadn't it? She started wearing black, and threw a tantrum when she couldn't pierce her nose.

By the time she was fourteen, she was well into her superhero phase, and refused to wear anything that wasn't blue with the number 4 on it.

And now she went in for neat, professional-looking clothes. Skirts and nice jackets.

Alice was volatile, temperamental, prone to exploding. (Literally.) Yancy was different. She was cheerful, sunny, bouncing, and absolutely _sure _that grownups were incompetent bumblers.

Ben's head was beginning to hurt. As soon as he could, he steered out of the main flow of traffic.

"Hey, where we going?" Already done with her hamburgers and well through her French fries, Yancy knelt in her seat to look around.

"Sit down! We're takin' a shortcut."

"Okay, okay." She slid back down into the seat with a jolt that rattled the van. "Can I have your burger?"

**Next chapter: Ben's trip gets sidetracked by two of your friendly neighborhood hitchhikers. Let me know what you think.**


	3. Chapter 3

They were cruising along when something landed on the roof with a _bump_. Yancy, of course, immediately cranked down her window and stuck her head out.

"Yancy!" yelled Ben, when he saw her head nearly miss a passing truck. "Don't do that!"

Man, he felt old around this kid.

Yancy looked serenely back at him. "Calm down, Dad, it's just M—"

Something small and wiry, a girl in a leotard and leggings and ski mask, came scrambling past Yancy through the window.

"Hi, Mr. Grimm," she said, clambering into the back seat and perching there like a graceful little spider given human form. "Having had a disagreement with certain parties who shall remain unnamed, I require a ride."

"Does your dad know you're here?" Ben asked warily, trying to keep one eye on her, one eye on Yancy, and another on the oncoming road. Unfortunately eyes were something he only had a couple of.

"Let me repeat," she said. "Having had a disagreement—"

"You're running away?" Yancy squealed.

"Yes." The girl sighed. "Therefore, please address me by my professional name, not the ones my parents bestowed on me."

"Oh, right," Ben said. "You're _that _one. The one who thinks she's a dictionary. What's your name again? They had that silly nickname for you. M&M—"

"It's Spider-Girl." She was scowling, he was sure, but he couldn't see through the ski mask. "M&M is a childish nickname, and I have cast off the things of childhood!"

"How old are you? Fourteen?"

"_Fifteen_!"

"Aren't your parents gonna get worried?" Yancy asked excitedly. "Where are you gonna stay? You could spend the night at our house. You haven't visited in, like, forever!"

"I plan to press my luck somewhere _outside_ New York," said Spider-Girl firmly. "My father and my older siblings will doubtless be searching all of my normal hiding spots."

Ben saw the red light at the last second. The van screeched to a halt and Spider-Girl was flung up onto the ceiling, where she clung on for dear life.

"Look, kid," Ben snapped, "there's nothing wrong with you hitching a ride with us, but you're gonna have to wear a seatbelt. Yancy, will you call Uncle Pete?"

Yancy pulled out her phone. "I don't remember his phone number and I never got him on my Caller ID like I was supposed to."

"Don't call my dad," Spider-Girl said suddenly, plaintively. She had dropped the long words, Ben noticed. "Please don't. I need a break from . . . all of that."

Someone banged on the side of the van. Yancy leaned out again.

"M&M—Spider-Girl—it's your brother," she said quickly.

A little boy with sandy-red hair poked his freckled nose up over the edge of the window. "She's in there?"

"_Hey! Kid! Get out of the road!_" someone yelled from one of the other cars.

"M&M, Mom says you have to come home now," said the little boy. Yancy quickly opened her door and he climbed over Yancy into the back seat. "She's almost got lunch ready."

"I shall never return!" bellowed Spider-Girl. "And my name is not M&M!"

"Mom says she doesn't care about your hair—"

"What happened to your hair?" Yancy asked, immediately intrigued.

"Nothing!" roared Spider-Girl, clamping her fingers over her mask. "Absolutely nothing has happened to my hair!"

"EVERYONE SIT DOWN!" yelled Ben, and pulled over.


	4. Chapter 4

They sat on the side of the road, watching the other cars inch by.

"You—little Parker—what's your name?" Ben started off by saying.

"Ricky."

"Yeah, I knew it started with an R."

"_Dad_," Yancy said, annoyed. "It's not that hard to remember their names, is it? There's Ricky, Benjy—like you—and Alexis—"

"I'm never going home!" wailed Spider-Girl. "I'm very emotional! I will live on the streets, fighting crime with my last breath, and then I'll die and you'll all be sorry!"

Yancy watched her impassively.

"You're not going to die," scoffed Ricky.

"You don't know that," his older sister said slyly. As they spoke, the windows began to steam and frost over.

"She's not, right, Mr. Grimm?" Ricky appealed.

"No one is going to die unless I kill them," Ben snarled. "Now, I'm not gonna be able to drive if the backseat is full of Spider-kids squirming everywhere!"

Something crashed into the windshield and exploded in a shower of ice.

"Daddy?" Yancy asked warily.

The ice fragments had cleared a few peepholes across the glass. Two pale blue boots suddenly landed on the hood—_whump._

"You kids stay here," Ben said, and opened the car door. Immediately, snow blew through, coating the interior of the car.

Stepping out onto icy ground—in _July_, no less—Ben looked up at the blue-suited figure standing on the hood of his car.

"Fear me!" roared the figure. "I am your worst nightmare! I now take this car and all its inhabitants as . . . _hostages_!"

"Who the heck are you?" Ben asked, singularly unimpressed.

From behind frosty goggles, the figure looked down at him. "I am everything you fear. I am the seeping coldness that you close your windows at, the frost on your windows that makes you want to go check your thermostat!"

Yancy peeked cautiously out of her window.

"Yeah, but what's your name?" Ben persisted.

"I," said the supervillain, with a dramatic pause. Energy crackled around his hands and a long icicle dagger began to grow inside his right fist, forcing his fingers to open wider. He held it above his head as it lengthened into a spear. In his other hand, a similar icicle appeared. The pause grew longer, until it reached the climax of its drama and began to decline.

"Yes? You . . . ?" Spider-Girl prompted, leaning out over Yancy's head.

"I!" screamed the supervillain, "Am! _FLURRY_!"

Yancy fell over laughing. In the back of the van, Ricky was giggling, and underneath her mask Spider-Girl was trying unsuccessfully to suppress snorting noises.

"'Flurry'?" Ben repeated.

"What?" Flurry whined. He flung down his ice spear and stamped his foot on the hood petulantly. "Why does everyone always react like that? It's a perfectly legitimate supervillain name!"

"'Flurry,'" Ben reminded him.

"See? It even sounds like 'Fury!'" Flurry raised his arms and started his ice spear over again. "Now bow to me . . . or you shall fall into the sleep of icy death!"

_Half an hour later:_

"I don't get why you guys are so uptight over attempted kidnapping," Flurry said, sulking. He was lashed to the statue in the back of the van. "I mean, it's not like I _did _anything _illegal_. Although there was that bank vault last week . . ."

"He just keeps digging himself deeper," Yancy said, glancing back, "doesn't he?"

"We're just going to drop you off with the police, okay?" Ben said.

"Nooooooooooooooooo!"

**Hopefully in the next chapter I'll actually start writing something about the plot. Until then . . .**


	5. Chapter 5

One space in the Baxter Building had been taken up by the same pretzel cart for over ten years. The vendor had sat through innumerable supervillain battles. He'd developed a reputation as the Fantastic Four's "pretzel guy."

Right now, he sat behind the counter of his cart, looking totally imperturbable—as usual. He kept his deadpan expression even as a huge rock monster ambled across the lobby and pulled out its wallet.

"You know," said Jeremy Grimm, shuffling out a few dollars, "I really think you should give me a discount. Seeing how my parents are basically your landlords and all."

The pretzel guy said nothing.

Jeremy's mother, Alicia, was standing near the great glass doors, holding her phone to her ear. Her huge black sunglasses kept sliding down her nose, so that she had to constantly push them back on.

"Hello?" she said anxiously. "Yancy, is that you?"

To the pretzel guy, across the room, her reply was merely a faint buzz.

"Wait, honey, don't talk so quickly," Alicia pleaded. "Is your father—what? Why are the Parkers with you? They what?"

Jeremy took his pretzel and tromped off, muttering as he pocketed his (much emptier) wallet.

"Yancy, let me talk to Daddy," Alicia insisted.

Daniel Grimm walked up to the pretzel cart. He glanced after Jeremy, and then pulled out his own wallet. His blond-red hair stuck up in spikes. "Was he bothering you about the discount again?"

The pretzel guy gazed stolidly off into the distance.

"He doesn't mean to be that obnoxious," Daniel said. "Uh, I'd like a pretzel dog."

The pretzel guy silently held out a pretzel dog. Daniel reached for it, and he yanked it back.

Daniel's pale blue eyes turned deep purple and began to flicker with energy.

"You didn't pay," rasped the pretzel guy, totally unimpressed.

Daniel's eyes turned blue again. He blinked, a little startled, and fingered clumsily through his wallet. "Oh. Sorry."

"Honey, I called the gallery," Alicia was saying, "and they said—what? What kind of distraction? Well, of course I understand, but—the Vault? You're going all the way to the _Vault_? Wait—I—"

Daniel took his pretzel and walked over to his mother.

"Mom."

"Danny, I'm on the phone."

"Daniel," he reminded her.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, smiling. Instantly she went back to the phone. "Ben—sweetie—the art showing is _this evening_. Please—"

"'Business' again?" Daniel asked flatly. "Does he have to go fight off some villain, stop a bank robbery or something?"

"As long as you're at the gallery by five," Alicia said, ignoring him. "That will just barely give them enough time to unload and . . . Ben? Ben, you're breaking up. A—a tunnel? What about a tunnel?"

Daniel sighed and walked out.


	6. Chapter 6

Ricky Parker sometimes felt left out.

M&M was insanely smart. She memorized dictionary definitions just to show off.

His other sister was an amazing artist. His brother could patch together anything—from a new set of web-slingers to a car radio—with a room full of junk and a rainy afternoon.

Ricky wasn't really good at anything—not _really _good, not good enough to receive any sort of special recognition. (Plus, the whole superpower thing . . . but, better not to dwell on that.)

Even so, he was the baby of the family, which gave him an advantage in getting his way.

"Mr. Ben, can you turn the radio on?" he asked, leaning forward in his seat.

Ben jabbed at the power button. Music filled the car.

"Can you change the station?"

Ben did so.

"Can you try to find—"

Ben performed a preemptive poke at the Search button.

"No, not that one, the other one," Ricky said. "Go back, please?"

"I like this song," Yancy put in.

"Not this one!" yelped Spider-Girl. "Continue scanning!"

"Try to find some Taylor Swift," Flurry piped up from the back seat.

"Go back!" said Ricky.

"Ooh! Colbie Caillat!" yelped Flurry.

Ben set his jaw and swung his huge forefinger at the radio. His whole arm was lost in a tangle of wires and buttons, and the music vanished in a hiss of static.

The kids were silent.

"I liked that radio," Yancy said in a sad little voice.

With a screech of tires, the car pulled into the parking lot in front of the Vault—a prison designed especially for the incarceration of supervillains.

"You three stay here," Ben said, getting out.

"I want to come," Yancy said suddenly.

"_Why_?" Spider-Girl asked disbelievingly.

"Please, Daddy?" Yancy asked.

Ben paused in the middle of dragging Flurry out of the backseat.

"Please?"

"Yancy . . ." Ben groaned.

"Please . . ." Her wide blue eyes were fixed on him, and he suddenly remembered why he had taken her along on this trip.

Quality time.

Plus those tapes, and Franklin's dream, the one he'd almost forgotten . . .

_We had to fight one of your kids . . . one you lost. A little one._

How on earth could anyone _lose _their kid? How could anyone be that careless?

"Daddy?" Her voice snapped him out of it.

"Fine!" he said, dropping Flurry and picking him up again.

"Then I'm coming too!" Ricky yelled.

"No, you're not," Spider-Girl snapped.

"_Yes I am_!"

"You can wait in the lobby!" roared Ben.

**I need to announce that I will be taking a break from for a while. I have other, more pressing matters to attend to. I hope that I'll be able to return to writing this story sometime, but I don't know when that will be.**

**Thank you for reading. **


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